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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27175243">all the things they might have said to you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilighteve/pseuds/twilighteve'>twilighteve</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Gen, Parent Donald Duck, be ready to see a wall of text y'all i didn't write dialogues until about 2/3rds in the story, della duck learns about parenting and is out of her depth, everyone has issues and is sad, guilty scrooge mcduck, the kids are mostly mentioned</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:08:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,033</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27175243</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilighteve/pseuds/twilighteve</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Della went to the moon and wondered how much of it was wanderlust and how much of it was her heart screaming terrified screams over the children she chose to bear but wasn’t ready to.</p>
<p>Donald broke his relationship with the man he thought of as a father and raised his nephews, mourning for a corpse that was still alive.</p>
<p>Scrooge shut himself off from the world. He built glass castles of routine and cold detachment and glue them all together with nothing but spit and spite.</p>
<p>Della comes back from the dead, and the glass castles shatter.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Della Duck &amp; Donald Duck, Della Duck &amp; Donald Duck &amp; Scrooge McDuck, Della Duck &amp; Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck &amp; Scrooge McDuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>167</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fav Recs, Finished111</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>all the things they might have said to you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sunlight seeped through the gaps of the curtains, shining a light in the otherwise dark room. Mornings were slow in the McDuck household, but something about this felt leaden, heavy and stifling despite the lazy ease that the household always carried, even in the excitement of adventures and treasure huntings.</p>
<p>Della’s eyes fell onto the three eggs gleaming in the sun. She knew why.</p>
<p>Why did she even have them?</p>
<p>A wave of guilt rushed into her like sudden hot wind before a storm. She wanted them. <em>She wanted them</em>. Why else did she even choose to have them? She wanted them, and she was happy and nervous and excited and scared, but wouldn’t anyone? Wasn’t parenthood, in itself, a gift and a challenge in one?</p>
<p>She left the room. The eggs would be fine; they were eggs. The time to worry and lose sleep over babies wasn’t upon her just yet.</p>
<p>It was easy to plaster a smile and assure everyone she was fine, her eggs were fine, everything was <em>fine</em>, she just wanted to walk around because she’d been cooped up in the manor for a long time and she needed to feel the wind in her feathers. It was as fine as fine could be.</p>
<p>She found out about the space ship and every cell in her being vibrated in excitement, in a way she hadn’t felt in a long while. It was easy to steal a look of the Spear of Selene, it was easy to sneak into the cockpit, it was easy to power it up and let it rise to the atmosphere. Just a quick trip, just a test flight, and she would be back to earth. After all, Uncle Scrooge had this made for her to celebrate her children. Wasn’t it in her rights to check if the ship was right as rain, if she, if Uncle Scrooge, wanted to give the little ones the stars?</p>
<p>And then the cosmic storm happened, and she wondered, oh. Was she wrong to have stepped foot in the Spear, when there were kids not even hatched back on earth and a brother she would dump them on and an uncle she basically robbed from?</p>
<p>Why was there a teeny, tiny, guilty part in her heart that was relieved she could get away from them all?</p><hr/>
<p>Della shot off the orbit, got lost in a cosmic storm, and disappeared off the face of the planet, the manor where they grew up, the lives that she had touched with feather light laughter and whirlwind excitement.</p>
<p>Uncle Scrooge did all he could to search for her and bring her home, but to no avail.</p>
<p>Donald decided he had had enough, took the eggs, and made a life out of pennies and anger and too much demand for too little reward in order to prepare something for three children he was in no way prepared for and should never have prepared for in the first place. He built cradles out of wood and sewed swaddles out of muslin and laid himself in patch-sewn hammock and dreamed of a life he wished he could give the kids. As the hatching approached he stocked all cabinets with formula milk and baby food and hoped the gentle sway of the sea could rock the babies to sleep as he glanced at rows and rows of dirt cheap ramen and greeted hunger like a new friend – they would see each other for a long, long time spanning over years and years.</p>
<p>He managed to keep himself together until the week after the babies hatched. He had scrapped the names Della had chosen for them, worried they would give them troubles with bullies later when they’ve gotten to school and worried he couldn’t pronounce the names correctly (worried their names would remind him of a sister long gone and worried he would break in front of them and worried they would one day follow her footsteps and disappeared into the orbit, worried, worried, <em>worried</em>) and instead called them Huey, Dewey, and Louie, color-coding them according to the colors they were drawn to the most. It had been a long day at work, and the kids hadn’t been cooperating, and Louie <em>kept crying</em> and that set off Huey and Dewey and they would spiral and spiral and <em>spiral</em> as they reached an unending feedback loop and Donald was so <em>tired</em>.</p>
<p>Whatever higher being out there decided to take pity on him, and somehow he managed to calm the triplets enough to get them to sleep. He matched his breath to the gentle rush of the waves slapping the hull of his boat, got into his room, and sat on his hammock.</p>
<p>Something ugly that he had been holding back since Della disappeared tore through his chest.</p>
<p>This wasn’t fair.</p>
<p>None of this was fair. He wasn’t supposed to be taking care of children that wasn’t even his, he wasn’t supposed to sit in an empty room cradling his hunger like a lover, he wasn’t supposed to be <em>alone</em> and feeling like half his soul had been stolen and scattered to the wind. Della wasn’t supposed to be gone and he wasn’t supposed to be a parent for her kids.</p>
<p>It was all Della’s fault, so stupidly brazen and reckless and thoughtless, going up to space without even a shred of preparation. It was all Uncle Scrooge’s fault, so arrogantly excited over the prospect of exploring the unexplored and forgetting the danger and the mortality of their blood and bones. It was all his fault, for not being able to convince Uncle Scrooge to stop constructing the Spear, for not being able to tell that Della was about to do something stupid, for not stopping any of it from happening the moment the gears began to turn.</p>
<p>This wouldn’t happen if the kids weren’t here at all.</p>
<p>The moment the thought crossed his mind, Donald choked on a breath that he took in and coughed until his throat felt raw. Once the coughing subsided he went out to get a glass of water, saw the boys sleeping peacefully, and broke down in tears.</p>
<p>His sister was dead, he had cut off all communication with his uncle, and he had three babies he had to care for. Lack of proper nutrition had stripped his feathers from all shine and he was sick of ramen and egg, sick of getting baby milk, sick of choosing what other thing he could do without so he could sell it for money to pay for more baby milk.</p>
<p>But Huey, Dewey, and Louie were what he had now and the last chain to remind him of a sister he lost to the sky, and he would tear heavens to pieces to keep them safe and sound even if it was the last thing he could do.</p><hr/>
<p>Della shot off to the sky and the great expanse of the stars swallowed her whole.</p>
<p>Donald blamed everything on him, took Della’s eggs, and built a life out of cardboard houses and baby supplies and refused to answer any of his calls.</p>
<p>His board of directors forced him to stop his search and face the facts (not facts, not facts, there was no body to be found and no ship to bring back and he refused to accept it until he saw her skeleton) and had him return to his work in a company he built for his glory and planned to gift to her family, but there was no more family, now. There was no family in missing niece and estranged nephew and little babies he didn’t even know the names of.</p>
<p>Fine, if that was how it had to be. Family was nothing but trouble. Family was <em>poison</em>, and he refused to drink poison when he could drink wine, and he shut himself in an empty house and an empty empire and built, built, built until he could build no more.</p>
<p>His life used to be one of blood rushing into his head as his adrenaline spiked, reaching for treasures and breaking curses and escaping crumbling temples. It was the twins laughing and joking and poking, pulling him into their circle of joy, hushed words fondly whispered over a cup of hot cocoa in the gentle glow of the fireplace, brutal game nights that always somehow ended in them hugging each other and tumbling over giggling. Now his life was a cold empty routine with a bumbling driver that tried so, so hard to bring him out of his shell – but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not anymore. Not when his newly built castle was one of fear and cold and brittle cracked glass barely held together, and he would hold it together even if he bloodied his hands in the jagged edges of the shattered glass he pretended was brick.</p>
<p>Beakley brought in a toddler, later. Her granddaughter, a wee one she called Webbigail lovingly, and Scrooge absently noted that she was the same age as Della’s triplets and wondered if the soft, fierce look in Beakley’s eyes would have been the same as his if the triplets were in his life.</p>
<p>He quashed the thought away and resumed his cold routine of going to the Money Bin, work, get back to the manor, and sit silently picking over his mistakes and pointing out what he could have done to keep Della on earth, safe and happy and <em>alive</em>, or what he could have done to keep Donald in the manor, breathing in the same air as him and talking to him, even if it was nothing but callous words and spat curses. He wondered what it would be like, to have the triplets here and grow up together with little Abigail, who had taken to peek through corners to steal glances at him whenever she could, but kept her distance from him.</p>
<p>Those were all what-ifs, useless in the end. He threw himself back into his work, grit his teeth and lied to himself that family was nothing but trouble, and drowned himself in poisoned wine of his own making.</p><hr/>
<p>Della tasted licorice on her tongue, ignored the phantom pains at her stump, and tried to build herself a ship to bring her back home. She tinkered and patched together a way to transmit videos to tell anyone, anyone at all, that she was still alive and as well as she could be and she was trying to get back home. She didn’t know if it would work, but it was her only hope.</p>
<p>(She ignored the ugly elation that she dodged her responsibility to her children and swallowed the guilt whole and tried to convince herself that the only way she could be happy was to go back home and be by her children’s side and be the mother they deserved to have.</p>
<p>She ignored the fact that the word <em>mother</em> terrified her more than the prospect of not being able to go back home.)</p>
<p>It was all so different, on the moon. The silence was deafening, the black sky was dark and bright and blinding, and as lonely as she was, she felt a freedom she hadn’t felt since she realized she was pregnant. She slapped that away and doubled down and screamed to herself and would continue screaming until it stuck; she wanted her kids, she wanted her kids, she had to go back and be with them because they deserved a cool mom and she had a freaking robot leg, of course she counted as a cool mom.</p>
<p>She built the rocket into being from the scraps and garbage she still had in the crash site she had been stuck in for so long, and wondered if the clench in her heart was from anticipation to go back or from dread to face a life she wasn’t sure she wanted to have.</p>
<p>It made her weep, how much relief flooded her lungs when the ship fell into ruins once more.</p><hr/>
<p>The triplets grew, and learned, and laughed, and Donald decided there was no treasure more precious than the three children that had practically turned into the lights of his exhausting life.</p>
<p>There were so many milestones they had passed. He never missed a single one, and he never failed to eternalize each and every one of them in the form of pictures. A part of him wondered if he was doing this purely for documentation purposes, to use to embarrass the triplets later when they bring their dates to meet him, or if there was still a tiny part of him that wished that one day Della would get to see the photos, that one day Uncle Scrooge could be in one of them.</p>
<p>But that was absurd. Della and Uncle Scrooge were parts of a life he no longer led. His life wasn’t treasure and weird magical shenanigans and bizarre spats with mythical figures anymore. It was unfulfilling jobs and PTA meetings and the triplets, laughing and crying and dancing around each other like the world was theirs to conquer and smiling at him, pulling at his hand and bringing smiles into his face until he forgot the scolding he got from his boss or the annoying customers or clients or whatnot or the last time he got fired for the umpteenth time. Huey, Dewey, and Louie was Donald’s whole world and he was theirs, and he was so lucky he had them in his life.</p>
<p>Of course, that thought was always accompanied by a crushing guilt and a sob that threatened to wrench itself out of his throat. It made him feel like he had traded Della for the triplets and it made him angry and sad and so, so helpless in the machinations of fate.</p>
<p>It didn’t mean he didn’t ache for the times well past, still. It didn’t mean he didn’t miss his sister’s feather light laughter and whirlwind excitement, didn’t miss Uncle Scrooge’s arrogant excitement and his ignorance over the mortality of his own blood and bones. But he had Huey with his meticulous planning and note-taking, Dewey with his reckless abandon of rules and safety as he jumped straight into the ocean without a safety jacket, Louie with his keen eyes for details and talent to wring money in any opportunity he could grab. It didn’t mean he didn’t miss what he had years ago, but this was what he had now, and he would cherish it with every single strand of feather on his body and each beat of the stubborn heart that refused to fail with each passing danger he had faced over the years of his life.</p>
<p>He hadn’t realized how stagnant his life had become. It was a routine and a dance, going to work and fretting over himself worrying over the kids, having some unfortunate accident or other, and losing his job over it. It was routine, to go to sleep exhausted and hungry and mourning for a life long lost and building a dam to contain it away, letting it build higher and higher as the water continued to trickle and accumulate as he pushed it away as far as he could because he had so many other things to worry about, so many other things to do, so many other things to take care of.</p>
<p>The boys managed to dupe him halfway, the babysitter wouldn’t be coming, and the houseboat was jumpstarted as the triplets ran him in circles trying to go to Cape Suzette.</p>
<p>Donald decided enough was enough and answered the coos of the rain dove that had sang its song for years and years and drove to the hill he once called home and hoped he could trust his uncle and his ignorance of mortality, and, despite his better judgement, allowed Uncle Scrooge to hold the light that had kept him alive and hoped they wouldn’t burn.</p><hr/>
<p>Scrooge met Della’s three children at last and felt part of his glass castles crumble. That cold façade he’d held on to stubbornly, as if scratching a mosquito bite believing to relieve the itch only to create welts, had been shattered with a laughter and a smile from the boys. He held on to the broken pieces and felt them dig into his flesh and tried to distance himself from them, but they stubbornly clung to him and pulled out each and every jagged piece with each word they spoke.</p>
<p>Family was nothing but trouble, and Scrooge missed trouble, terribly, <em>terribly</em> so.</p>
<p>A part of him ached still, seeing the boys – it was so easy to see Della in them, and her presence was blindingly bright in them that it eclipsed the very boys that they truly were at their core. But he looked on, watched them as they bickered and played and pulled Webby into their orbit and circled around each other as if they had been together since birth instead of the mere weeks they’d known the girl, and he could see Huey, Dewey, and Louie at last, and could see Donald in them just as easily as he could see Della. It wasn’t as obvious; Donald was the moon to Della’s sun watching over the triplets’ earth.</p>
<p>He wondered if he could see Scrooge in them, too, but he dismissed the thought. He didn’t deserve that, not after failing to keep Della safe, not after failing to bring her home like he vowed he would do. Once upon a time he might have dared to claim to be the stars for the moon and the sun, helping them raise the earth, but not anymore. Not after failure after failure after failure and wrapping himself in spite trying to prove that he didn’t need the sun or the moon.</p>
<p>That was stupid of him, he realized now. Donald and Della were the moon and the sun and when it was only the three of them he was the earth under their mercy, and he couldn’t live and laugh and thrive without the light they shone and the pull of their gravity. And who was he kidding? He was never the stars. The stars were the kids, Webby included, shining brightly in the night sky and dancing around each other creating changing constellations that had him pointing and wondering what they would form next.</p>
<p>The glass castles didn’t crumble completely, of course. It was built of work routines and work was work and he had to do them to maintain the empire he had built, because for once there was something to come back to and something to leave his legacy for.</p>
<p>That didn’t mean his life was all sunshine and rainbows later. He – <em>they</em> – still faced many trials, still learning how to be a family, still nursing old hurts that had become infected after ignored for too long, but they were learning, and they made progress, inch by inch, second by second. It still broke his heart to see Donald without Della, and it broke his heart further to know that the weight of the children’s safety and wellbeing robbed him of Donald’s own health, physical or otherwise. It was almost a relief to send Donald to relax on a cruise, but he needed it, he needed it, he needed to slow down and rest up and remember that Scrooge was more than willing to bear the weight with him, as clumsy as his hands were.</p>
<p>And then Della came back from the dead, as bright as she was before she went away, her shine blinding him of what he had just regained as he held the sun in his hands and hung it for the children to see.</p>
<p>The moon had always been far less bright than the sun, but Donald would be fine. He needed his downtime, Scrooge could tell him of Della’s return and made it a surprise later. He closed his eyes and ears from all signs that something was wrong, told himself it was only the new moon, and basked in the warmth of the sunlight.</p><hr/>
<p>Della managed to build her ship back from scratch with the help from the Moonlanders, swallowed her fears and convinced herself she was ready to assume the role she all but abandoned a decade ago, and ran back home fueled by nothing but the rising bile in her throat and the beating of his terrified heart.</p>
<p>Uncle Scrooge was older, but of course he was. Despite that he was still the same bleeding heart that covered himself in a shiny armor to hide the fact that he was a sap that would trade everything for the safety and wellbeing of his loved ones. Donald wasn’t there – on a vacation, she was told, and even as her heart pined for a missing half she had been denied from for far too long, she swallowed the longing and plastered on a smile. Donald was always so prone to stressing out. He could do with a relaxing vacation.</p>
<p>The kids, however. There was a brief burst of anger when she realized Donald had changed their names – she had prepared cool names befitting of her cool kids, how dare he change them. But they were who they were, and names didn’t matter as much as long as they were here and she was here and that was all that mattered. She plunged herself into a role she had no idea how to do and took the mantle of a mother and convinced herself again and again that she was ready, she was fine, she could do this.</p>
<p>She realized she was out of her depth when the Gilded Man began rampaging, and that realization was only deepened with more and more blunder she made. Dewey was forgiving of it, too ecstatic to have her back to really consider them blunders the way Della did, and Huey was patient with her, assuring her that it was as much a learning curve for her as it was for them, but Louie was… aloof. He inched forward to her increasingly frantic attempts to mother them with wariness that reminded her of Donald’s caution. Something in it stung her, how they were as much his as they were hers. Something in her screamed that Donald was stealing her place, but she shut it down as fast as she could. She left, and she came back, and she <em>would</em> regain her spot, one way or another.</p>
<p>So she tried, and tried, and tried, with Dewey and Huey and Louie in particular, but her efforts only seemed to push Louie further into his shell and they bottle everything up pretending it was all fine and dandy, and eventually the bottle was too full to close properly and she shook it up and down by yelling at Louie when he broke time and everything exploded.</p>
<p>She wanted this, she tried to convince herself again that night as shadows creeped and the stars winked. She wanted this, and she could do this, and it was all she had ever hoped for, blunders and all.</p>
<p>She slept with a bed of lies and a blanket of mistakes and convinced herself it was the most comfortable she had felt in her life.</p><hr/>
<p>Donald shot himself off into the orbit, crash-landed on the moon, got taken prisoner, and broke out with the help of a Moonlander. He shot himself back into the orbit, crash-landed on earth, got himself stranded on an island, and spent his days trying to keep himself alive while trying as best as he could do sail back home.</p>
<p>He couldn’t, of course. He didn’t even know where he was, so navigation was basically impossible, and there was no way to get himself off the island. He tried to build a raft but it kept falling apart, and he had spent so much time building it he wasn’t even sure he could rid his hands of splinters anymore.</p>
<p>And then Della crashed into the beach, bringing Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby along with her.</p>
<p>Cracks had appeared in the dam he had built over the years. They always do; cracks, appearing. But it was harder this time to hold them back, with thoughts fleeting too fast for him to catch and the realization that his long-dead sister wasn’t so dead after all and that she had taken her place back while he was gone. Something about her was jagged and callous; he wasn’t sure what.</p>
<p>“If you had been home you would have known I was stuck on the moon, which by the way is invading,” Della accused.</p>
<p>“I know, I warned you,” he hissed back.</p>
<p>“We didn’t get any warning,” Della threw back. “And just because I missed you, doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you!”</p>
<p>“You think I don’t miss you too?” Donald yelled. “You think I don’t spend hours every day just wishing you weren’t dead? You weren’t, but you weren’t there!”</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s rich coming from you. At least Uncle Scrooge tried to search the sky. What did you do? Sat on your hands doing nothing?”</p>
<p>The cracks grew bigger, and bigger, and it leaked.</p>
<p>“I sent transmissions, and you didn’t even try to intercept them! Instead you’re just there taking the role of a caretaker and then just went off to a vacation while the Moonlanders attacked.”</p>
<p>The dam broke. Years upon years of accumulated grief turned into anger and hurt and flooded his whole being until he could no longer think.</p>
<p>“I thought you were dead!” he screamed, and he could barely understand his own words in the wake of the sob that threatened to wrench itself free from his lungs. “I thought you were dead, and Uncle Scrooge built that ship for you and it brought you to your death, and you left behind children that hadn’t even hatched. What was I supposed to do, leave them to die along with you? Let whatever of you I have left die?”</p>
<p>“You took my place!”</p>
<p>“You weren’t there to take your place. You abandoned your place!” He threw the words like a slap and it made Della stagger as if there was a physical weight to it. “You took that rocketship, and you went, and you were gone, and you were declared dead. You went on your own. No one forced you to go!”</p>
<p>“I – the ship needed testing!” Della defended, but her voice shook.</p>
<p>“Uncle Scrooge had test pilots!” Donald snarled. “You’re a pilot, but not an astronaut, and not a test pilot. It wasn’t your job to test the ship. Just admit that you were just running away!”</p>
<p>Della stiffened. “What do you mean.” It was a demand, not a question.</p>
<p>Donald scoffed. There was a tiny part of him that wanted to stop, stop, shut up, but years of letting grief fester and ferment had made him angry and ugly and he wanted to make Della <em>hurt</em>. “You think I didn’t pay attention back then? You think I didn’t see you grow more nervous as hatching time gets close?”</p>
<p>Della’s eyes widened. “Stop.”</p>
<p>“You think I didn’t hear you ask for <em>just one more adventure, one last time</em>? You think I didn’t notice you getting more scared by the day?”</p>
<p>“Stop!”</p>
<p>Donald had always had a talent to voice Della’s ugliest thoughts in one way or another. “How much of it was because you wanted to explore, and how much of it was because you didn’t want to be a mom?”</p>
<p>There was a choked sob, and Donald turned to see Huey staring at them blankly, Dewey holding on to Louie, and Louie trying and failing to contain his tears. By then, Webby scooted away in discomfort, but seemed reluctant to leave the triplets.</p>
<p>“Did you not… want us?” Huey asked, voice worryingly toneless.</p>
<p>“No! No, no, I wanted you! I wouldn’t have had you if I didn’t want you!” Della hurried to answer.</p>
<p>“But then you… got on that ship,” Dewey said softly.</p>
<p>“It – it was a mistake I made,” Della admitted. “But I’m back here! I’m back home, and I’m here.”</p>
<p>“But you weren’t there, before,” Louie breathed. “You chose to go and you didn’t come back until recently.”</p>
<p>Della reached out to him and he dodged her hands away. He made a beeline to Donald and hugged him tight, gross beard and all. Donald hugged back just as tightly, determined to give one of the boys that had given him joy in the darkest moments in his life any sort of relief that he could offer.</p>
<p>“This is getting nowhere,” Huey broke the tense silence after long last. “We need to go back to Duckburg. Uncle Scrooge is facing Lunaris alone.”</p>
<p>Dewey frowned at him. “But how? Uncle Donald hasn’t been able to leave the island.”</p>
<p>“I’m sure Uncle Scrooge will be fine,” Della said. “He’s a capable man! He can deal with Lunaris on his own!”</p>
<p>“Like you can handle one last adventure, <em>Della</em>?” Louie asked, callous. The use of her given name instead of the title she had adopted had Della flinching, and Donald held Louie tighter.</p>
<p>Gladstone and Fethry arrived atop a giant krill, and any sort of familiar confrontation was put aside in favor of fighting the Moonlanders, but it hung back in Donald’s mind like a shadow that refused to fade.</p><hr/>
<p>Against all odds, they managed to defeat Lunaris and welcomed peace back on earth.</p>
<p>Peace on earth. Not in their household.</p>
<p>Scrooge found out belatedly that Donald was never in the cruise. The crush of guilt as his failure to keep his family safe had to be put aside to handle Huey, who had spent all their time together stubbornly reading his guidebook and ignoring all words spoken to him, Dewey, who had been oddly subdued, and Louie, who had refused to call Della <em>mom</em> and insisted on calling her by her name, and Webby, normally so sure of her position, hovering uncertainly by them like a boat untethered.</p>
<p>And he found out what had happened in the island, and his glass castles crumbled to pieces at last.</p>
<p>He directed the children to their rooms, deciding that the discussion that he would soon have with the twins was something they didn’t need to hear. The kids obeyed without much fuss for once and he herded the twins to his study.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a storm that he had been dreading, but it was… something.</p>
<p>“You took my place,” Della accused, and it sounded like a repetition.</p>
<p>“You abandoned your place,” Donald threw back. “And don’t you tell me I was doing nothing. I was raising your kids for you. I was raising the kids of my dead sister who thought it was a good idea to go to space without preparation.”</p>
<p>“I’m not dead!”</p>
<p>“I thought you were! I thought you were, and there was no one to raise the kids!”</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s rich. It wasn’t like you raised them alone, Uncle Scrooge was there,” Della bit.</p>
<p>Scrooge shook his head. “No. I wasn’t there.”</p>
<p>Della turned to him slowly, uncertainly. “What do you mean, you weren’t there?”</p>
<p>“Donald took the kids and raised them on his own,” Scrooge explained. “I built the Spear for you and the kids. Donald didn’t want me to end up hurting them that way.”</p>
<p>“But you didn’t mean to get me stuck on the moon!” Della protested. “You raised us well!”</p>
<p>“That doesn’t change the fact that I had the ship built,” Scrooge pointed out. “I should have known you were never one to sit contently. I should have made sure you didn’t get into the Spear. I shouldn’t have built it in the first place.”</p>
<p>Scrooge had built many, many castles out of glass and held them together with pretense and stubborn denial, and wondered if Della did the same. He knew what it felt like to have his castles shatter, and he way Della stared at him reminded him of it.</p>
<p>“But… why?” she asked, turning to Donald.</p>
<p>“Because they’re yours,” Donald answered quietly, “and you weren’t there anymore.”</p>
<p>When Della failed to respond, Donald sighed and turned away, walking out of the room and closed the door with a soft click.</p>
<p>When Della truly crumbled at last, Scrooge was there to hold her together and take out the pieces of jagged glass she stubbornly clung to until they dig into her flesh. There wasn’t much he could do, but he would take her old hurts into his own heart if he could.</p><hr/>
<p>Donald was sitting at the pier when Della found him, much later on, watching the sun dip into the waters and letting the red of the sky wash over his feathers. Della sat by his side, and when he didn’t move away, she took it as an invitation to stay.</p>
<p>They sat there, silently watching the sunset. After a while, Donald spoke up, “Did you ever really want the kids?”</p>
<p>Della breathed out. “I did,” she said. “I do. I wasn’t ready when I had them, and I’m still not ready now, but I’m not sorry I brought them into this world.”</p>
<p>“Then why did you leave?”</p>
<p>She blinked into the red light. “Because I do want them, but I didn’t want to be a mother, and I was scared.” She took a shaky breath. “I still am.”</p>
<p>“You have time to learn if you want to,” Donald pointed out. “And if the kids are okay with it.”</p>
<p>“No,” her answer was quick and steady. She wrung her fingers together. “They have had better and they deserve better than me. I’m… still not sure I want to be a mother at all, right now.” She turned to Donald and wondered how much growing up he had gone through in all the time she fled to the sky. “Donald, they’re so much more yours than they are mine.”</p>
<p>Donald stared and took her hand, letting his warm fingers curl around hers. It was forgiveness in all but words, and Della would weep if she still had tears to give.</p>
<p>“I still want to be a part of their life anyway,” Della stated.</p>
<p>“That’s not up to you,” Donald pointed out.</p>
<p>“I know.”</p>
<p>“It’s up to them.”</p>
<p>“I know.” Della closed her eyes. “Louie’s so mad at me. But I still want to be by their side, even if I can’t give them a mother.” She peered at Donald. “Does that make me selfish?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Donald answered readily. “But everyone is, one way or another.”</p>
<p>Silence fell. After a while, Donald spoke up again, “I’m not sorry, either.”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“That you brought them into the world,” Donald elaborated. “I’m not sorry, either. They’re the best thing that have happened to me.”</p>
<p>Della’s smile was small, and soft, and true. “That’s more proof that they’re yours.”</p>
<p>Donald returned the smile. “I’ve missed you.”</p>
<p>She closed her eyes and pressed their foreheads together. “I’ve missed you, too.”</p>
<p>They sat together silently, basking in the dying light of the sun, resting in a stagnant moment as long as it could last. Soon they would go back home to the stars of their sky and sweep away the broken glass and torn boards of the glass castles and cardboard houses they stubbornly held on to. There were still conversations to have, difficult ones with the triplets, but they would build another cottage soon, out of bricks and mortar and stones this time. It wouldn’t be a grand but brittle castle or a façade of a house; it would be a home, warm and loving and strong enough to withstand any hurricane, either from outside or in.</p>
<p>Della closed her eyes and breathed. She was selfish, and greedy, and not at all ready to take responsibility she decided to take on a whim and then fled from over a decade ago, but she was lucky in all the way that mattered, and she had so much more than she rightfully deserved. She curled her arms around what she had all the same and made them hers, and she would fight tooth and nail to keep them, and she would not flee again this time.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this idea came to me because of a discord convo with friends (if you're reading, hello!) about... della basically. there's a lot of salt involved.</p>
<p>the title of the fic came from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y07xArvIvjw&amp;ab_channel=TheCraneWives-Topic">Never Love an Anchor by The Crane Wives</a>, a song that basically is my model on what sort of mindset i want della to eventually form at the end of the fic. listening to it is highly recommended. also the song just slaps.</p>
<p>anyway, hope you enjoyed this! also, come yell at me at my tumblr. <a href="https://trash-raccoon.tumblr.com/">trash-raccoon</a> for my main blog and <a href="https://twilighteve-writes.tumblr.com/">twilighteve-writes</a> for my writing blog.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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